


Kinder

by Sakakura



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Comfort, Dealing With Trauma, Emetophobia, M/M, New Dangan Ronpa V3 Spoilers, Post-Game, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 12:02:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13189671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sakakura/pseuds/Sakakura
Summary: Leave it behind, throw it away, help them, help yourself.Be kind.





	Kinder

He has grass up his nose.

No, to be exact, he has grass everywhere. On his face, in his hair, hands and clothes and scarf. He wouldn‘t be surprised if some of it had found its way into his underwear. Only his back remains completely grass-free, the sunlight burning into it and making his palms sweaty as he lies face-down on that hill.

It’s uncomfortable.

It’s dumb.

He retains his position nevertheless.

The main question to ask, then, would be: what is Kokichi Ouma doing exactly, as he rests face down on the grassy parts of the Saishuu Academy courtyard? One very good, direct question that would probably be met with a million different answers, all of them containing varying degrees of truth and lies.

And that’s exactly how he likes it, usually. He’s a riddle, an enigma. Making people want to solve him, just to escape their clutches when they thought they were close enough to catch him is something he seldom ever gets tired of. After all, it’s the spotlight, it’s the grand prize—there’s nothing better than when all eyes are on _him._

Only today he  _is_ tired of the spotlight.

So he empties his mind of excuses. He closes his eyes and shuts out the truth, the lies, and all the endless possibilities contained in the grey area between the two of them.

Right now, there’s only the grass, the sunlight. The dirt under his nails and on the soles of his shoes.

For one second, he breathes easy.

“Ah, so this is where you were.” A second is a second, no matter how much he would’ve liked for it to stretch until eternity.

Groaning, Kokichi Ouma rolls onto his back to glare at the intruder. He was hoping for him to catch the hint and go away, but his plans got foiled as he accidentally stares at the sun instead, his eyes suddenly snapping shut with tears forming in the corners.

It takes him a few seconds of blinking away the tears and blurriness until he can see Shuuichi Saihara’s figure slightly leaning in, watching him with a mixture of concern and anxiety.

His brain instantly conjures images of himself doing very much the same thing at some point, in a certain entomologist’s research lab.

“Huh, hello there, Saihara-chan. I’d say it’s a pleasure to see you again, but you see—you’re in my light.”

The detective quirks an eyebrow.

“You were sunbathing?”

“Uh-huh!”

“Face-down?”

“Yep!”

“With your clothes on?”

“Eeeh?” Ouma grins at him mockingly, his voice adopting that tone he has, the one he specifically designed to annoy the everloving shit out of anyone who heard it. “What is with this line of questioning~? Did you want to see me naked that badly, Saihara-chan~?”

3, 2, 1, action. There’s the moment of hesitation where he’s processing what Ouma just told him. There’s the second of confusion at his words. There’s the abject look of horror he’d been looking for. Then the embarrassment.

His expressions really are the best.

“Just kidding! I know you wouldn’t have such intentions, relax, relax!” He chuckles and sits up on the grass. One of his hands pat his clothes and hair, trying to get the few blades of it that still clung to them off.

“I forgot how much you liked giving everyone a hard time.”

“Eh, it’s not just everyone, you’re special Saihara-chan!”

“Right.”

“But anyway… what are you here for? Shouldn’t you be like, celebrating with the others or something?” Ouma flicks one of the last remaining leaves with his index finger and thumb, trying not to look too interested. The more he ignores him, the faster he’ll leave him to his own devices. “You must reaaaaaaally like me if you’re here! Oh, wait, maybe you’re here to kill me?!”

That should do it. Nonsense and teasing, and wasting the other boy’s time, that’s how you get him frustrated enough to leave. You push and push away, until he has nowhere to go but the opposite direction of where he’s at.

_Predictable, boring. Push, push, gone._

Saihara sighs—

_Corner, corner, ran off the gameboard._

—and sits down on a spot right across his.

Ouma blinks.

“Eh, what kind of weird murder plan are you scheming, Mr. Great Detective?” His tone is teasing, but his face is just the tiniest bit blank. _What is your intention, why are you still here, what the hell do you want?_

With furrowed brows, Saihara lets his right hand wander to just under his chin. Ah, a detective pose! Wonderful, it still suits him. Not even that weak predisposition of his can take away the fact that sometimes he actually manages to look cool.

“Why do you keep acting like I’d want to kill you?”

“Well, don’t you see where we’re at?” With a smile now resurfacing on his lips, Ouma gestures to the school, to the Exisals, to the Monokumarz. “Trying to get the drop on me in a place like this… smart, smart Saihara-chan. It’s obvious that it can’t be anything but that!”

A beat, then two. For a few seconds, all he could hear was the rustling leaves in the (artificial) wind, all he could see was Saihara’s confused expression turning into something else under the (artificial) sunlight.

Oh, he missed some (artificial) grass on his pants.

“Where we’re at…?” The detective repeated slowly, his eyebrows furrowing further. “What do you mean, Ouma-kun?”

He’s dense.

“We’re at Saishuu Academy of course! Home of Danganronpa’s very own 53rd killing game!” Ouma puffs his chest out in a fake proud motion. “Did you forget about that?”

“Did I forget?” Uh-oh, he actually thrust his right hand forward! He’s getting mad now! “Did _you_ forget, Ouma-kun? Did you forget that the killing game is over?”

Ouma giggles. “Just like I expected, Saihara-chan didn’t fall for that lie huh!”

“No, no one would fall for a lie that ridiculous…”

The grass has no smell in this place. The trees are slightly less defined. Even the bears don’t have that many lines programmed in them. It’s a good imitation, but anyone who had been in the original 53rd Danganronpa killing game would notice the difference right away, even after all these years.

Five entire years.

Saihara sighs again. He’s been doing that a lot. _If someone filmed him and upped the speed, it’d almost look like Saihara-chan is panting. That’d be such a perfect prank._

“You know, when we first came out of that first simulation… I thought you just needed time.” His hand hangs in the air for one more second before the other boy clasps it on his knee.

Ouma knows what he means. He hadn’t acted much like himself back then, choosing instead to stand near the background, watching everyone hug it out and cry. It was what he thought was best—not for them, god forbid. For himself of course. Who would even want to participate in all that sobbing and mutual ass-licking? Definitely not him.

—Haha.

“But… it’s been five years, Ouma-kun.” Saihara continues, unaware of his inner monologue, aware of his defensiveness. “We… all went through some bad stuff in there, and I think most of us have already buried the hatchet on some issues that were left hanging.”

He doesn’t say a word.

“It’s true that when we put together this little exhibit, part of the reason why we did it was to spread the word of how horrifying the game we were subjected to was. How much it scarred us and the other participants from other seasons.”

A compilation of the interviews Danganronpa had forced them to do through the years. The contract they had had to sign. Accounts of the sequels the game had left on each one of them, told by different speakers.

And of course, virtual reality pods so people could experience how it felt by themselves. How real. How majorly fucked up.

“But the other reason why we did was… well, because we wanted to meet up again.” Saihara’s face had just a slight hint of gentleness as his eyes stared a hole in the grass. Ouma clenched his fist. “We wanted to unite, to see each other again and fight together the way we weren’t allowed to within the killing game.”

Akamatsu’s words resonate in his mind. Something about trying hard and getting out of there together. That had worked out so well in the past.

But the past is the past. It’s true. He self-isolates, he clings to the corners, to the shadows, as his classmates walk into the light, into the fight. Kokichi Ouma had tried to fight within the game, had tried to steel himself and deceive the world, trick his classmates and the viewers and the ringleader alike, but all that fighting spirit is now dead and gone, and that’s how it has been for quite a while.

He’s a coward.

Within the killing game, he did many things. Horrible things. Unforgivable things.

But at least death is easy. Even if he had caused that much pain, he didn’t have to think about it, to remember Gonta’s sobs, to remember Iruma’s blue lips, to remember everyone’s pale faces if his brains were goo. Death was horrible, and he didn’t want to die, but he’d rather die than live with what he had done.

And then he had woken up… and screamed.

“My point is—no one hates you, Ouma-kun.” And he feels like screaming again. He wants to shake Saihara by the shoulders and make him see, _see_ who he’s talking to, what he’s saying. “I-I talked to everyone else… most of us weren’t at our best in the game. We all did things we’re not proud of.”

“Wow, awesome! Saihara-chan is giving me a free pass!” A voice dipped in honey, laced with poison. “And I barely had to do anything for it! Everything is forgiven, yahoo—!”

“God you’re frustrating.”

“Thank you so very much! I try!”

Saihara brings both legs up to his chest, as if to prepare himself for something. Bracing himself, remembering stuff. Ouma knows what that’s like.

“I know… a thing or two about guilt.” His words come out slowly, tentative. A complete mood change. Ouma can’t do anything but bite down on his sharp tongue, the atmosphere almost forcing him into silence.

“When I woke up… I spent three months avoiding everyone. Well, not everyone, I guess—I was still in touch with Yumeno-san and Harukawa-san. I think it was the same for them. We felt—we felt guilty, I guess.”

“For surviving.” Ouma completes, his face blank. But Saihara shakes his head.

“No. That was part of it too, but not the worst of it. It’s-it’s difficult to explain. It had less to do with us surviving, and more with… us having let them down. Every time we’d agree to stop the killing to honor everyone else’s memories… someone died anyway. Like clockwork.” He swallows hard, as if he is trying to take a huge pill without any water.

“We felt… like proof that we failed. Like only us three ‘winning’ was a show of how we couldn’t… manage it in the end.”

Saihara’s wandering eyes leave the fake grass, focusing instead on his face, making him feel like squirming. He stares right back instead, blank and unreadable.

“Well, things got resolved at some point. Akamatsu-san tricked us three into a pep talk… that’s more or less what it was. About how we weren’t at fault for the plan not working; the game had been designed that way.”

“And this is… what? You trying to give _me_ a nice little pep talk to ‘fix me’?” Their staring contest is still ongoing, so Ouma sees the resolve in Saihara’s face crumble for a second.

Then it comes right back.

“Her pep talk didn’t… ‘fix us.’” He corrects. “But it did help. It helped us realize that… we weren’t as horrible as we thought we were. It helped us be… kinder to ourselves.”

Rustle, rustle. He focuses on the sound of the leaves. He focuses on the feeling of the sun. The fake sun, the fake leaves, the fake grass, the fake earth. Anything to escape the reality of forgiveness.

“I think… the same thing applies to you, Ouma-kun. You struggled, we all did.”

“I got two people killed though! Did you forget that as you were planning your little speech? Wow, that’s embarrassing!” His fake calm face erupts in a fake leering expression. Shut up, it says. Leave me alone, it says. I’ll reject everything, go away!

Poison dripping from his mouth and his eyes and he feels like it’s almost dripping out of the tips of his fingers. Poison or anger, or something else entirely.

Saihara rolls his eyes, readjusting his legs. “No, I didn’t forget. But then again, that’s something you blame yourself for, right? I talked to both Gonta-kun and Iruma-san about this too… they don’t blame you for what happened.”

That. That is a load of bullshit. It has to be.

“I can see that with Gonta. That’s just like him, to just forgive people, but Iruma-chan? Are you trying to lie to my face Saihara-chan?”

But there are no lies in Saihara’s eyes. Just a little bit of embarrassment.

“Well, she did say that… uh, that she’d forgive you if you performed certain… sexual favors…”

“I refuse.”

“Haha, I don’t think she was being serious about it.” Despite how hostile the conversation is, the other boy actually manages to crack a smile. “I think it was her way of trying to lighten the mood.”

“So you say.”

“But anyhow,” he is clearly trying to steer the conversation back to the topic he wants to discuss. Meanie, Saihara won’t let him play at all. “What I’ve been trying to say is that… you’re the one who is not forgiving yourself. All of us have had a long time to… come to terms with our experiences with you in the killing game.”

“Wahhh, you all decided I’m your bestest friend now!” Ouma nods happily, pumping his fists. “All is forgiven, how nice!”

“—What we realized.” He interrupts again, and he almost wants to giggle at how incredibly frustrated Saihara looks. It’s cute. “Is that what you did… you did to survive. More than that, the clues you left, the script, the equipment… in a way, you were trying to look after us, weren’t you?

Ah. Being read isn’t nice. It’s gross. Disgusting. It’s almost like someone is physically reaching to his mask and tearing it off his face. He doesn’t like this one bit.

But it  _is_ nice. It is refreshing. What does a human being yearn for more but to be understood? The two feelings are so contradictory and painful and blissful in his brain.

His hands no longer feel like they’re dripping poison. Instead, he can feel them sweat.

“Mhmm? Oh, that? I just wanted you to run around and entertain me. It’d be too bad if the bad guy was 100% guaranteed to win!” In this hurricane of contradictions and nausea, he lets that slip past his lips. “I can’t believe you interpreted that in a positive way! I was just trying to make things a little more interesting.”

Saihara blinks and Ouma feels the panic in his stomach. A chance for forgiveness was presented, and he’d turned it away. It’s way too scary to be forgiven. It means letting people in. Seeing that he’s a person underneath it all. A human being behind the curtain.

How can he let him do that, when he still can’t even acknowledge himself as one?

His brain is mush, his expression is somewhat composed. He’s a master liar, a genius of poker faces. Even when he’s being torn at the seams. Even when he’s tearing himself at the seams.

“That…” the detective’s voice is a clear bell, a quiet but clear sound. Ouma braces himself. “... is a lie, though, isn’t it?”

He can’t hide anything. Horrified, bare, his lie is exposed in the gentlest way. It’s terrifying, it’s so wonderful.

“Your truth… the lies you enveloped yourself in… they have power. If you let me, I can help you—help you uphold the ones that push you forward, and cut down the ones that hold you back. We all can.”

There’s something hitting him, washing over him, throwing him against cliffs and rocks. Relief, fear, happiness, bitterness. Good, bad, all swirls around, all bleeds into each other and makes him dizzy.

Kindness.

Kokichi Ouma throws up.

“W-wha—are you okay!?” Saihara’s hand pats his back as the other boy empties the contents of his stomach on the beautifully maintained (fake) grass.

“N-nishishi.” His characteristic laugh comes out strained and raspy, but it comes out nevertheless. “This is no good at all~. If Saihara-chan is seeing right through me, I’ll be in trouble!”

Saihara laughs awkwardly, and although he still seems concerned, Ouma can’t help but notice that he also looks mildly grossed out. Figures. A detective that can’t handle bad smells, typical.

“I take it this means you’re coming with, right?” Being in the squatted position he’s in must be painful for the unathletic Saihara, because after a few seconds of shifting his weight from leg to leg, he finally decides to stand up.

“Yeah, yeah. After all, if Saihara-chan called out my bluff so spectacularly, I can’t do anything but comply to his every whim!”

“That’s not—well, it works for now.” The other boy throws his hands up in defeat, and Ouma can’t help but be reminded of Kiibo. He’d tease him about it if he didn’t still feel a little nauseated. “Let’s get going. I bet everyone is waiting and—I think you need medical attention.”

“Wh-what, this? It’s fake vomit, obviously!”

“...Liar.”

“Nishishi~”

“Ah.” Saihara says suddenly, and his hand shoots up once again. Softly, it brushes something off of his hair. “You still had some grass on you.”

“Hmm-hmm, thank you for brushing it off, Saihara-chan!” Ouma looks around one more time.

The school. The dorms. The labs. The Exisals. The bears. The cameras. The viewers. The horror.

It could all go to hell.

“I don’t wanna carry any part of this place with me!”

They both log out of the virtual reality simulator for the last time.

**Author's Note:**

> Haha, I wanted to finish the second chapter of Mirror Mirror before posting this, but Christmas kicked me in the butt! Oh well. It's still in the works. 
> 
> The prompts I was given were "Ouma's happiness" and "Virtual reality" but... sweats I hope I didn't completely miss the mark on the first one. I get too angsty in my writing sometimes oops!
> 
> Anyway thanks for reading! As usual, kudos, bookmarks and comments are greatly appreciated m ( _ _ ) m


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